Kanye West: ‘ Casting, Multiracial women only’

Kanye West accused of racism? This may surprise you but there was a protest in the streets of New York on Saturday, following this tweet by Kanye: ‘Season 4, Casting, Multiracial women only, no makeup please come as you are…’

The protestors pointed out that West was only interested in light-skinned women of color, and was excluding dark-skinned women. The person you see above carrying the protest sign, was identified by DeathandTaxes as the author of this Tumblr, and she went on denouncing what she calls the ‘entire fashion and beauty industry in which there is a racialized hierarchy of beauty which is a ubiquitous symptom of the legacy of colonialism’.

‘This casting call for “Multiracial ONLY” (not MULTIETHNIC which would still be fetishization) asserts that Black can only be beautiful when “MIXED” with another RACE. There is a history of wanting to dilute the Blackness of one’s children because of the longstanding stigmatization of Blackness’, she continued.

This is a very scabrous path, because at the end, aren’t we all mixed? Yes we are, and even the women she calls black, are mixed, there are no ‘pure races’, as awfully chilling this term sounds, and blackness is all relative. I would not even use the term race, it doesn’t mean anything, biologically speaking. But forget about races, she just means that light-skinned women are preferred to dark-skinned women. And because we are on the subject of races, she pushes the analogy to the extreme, and yes brings up the Hitler comparison:

‘ADDITIONALLY–the fetishization of women who are more than one race is alarmingly similar to Hilter’s pseudoscience of eugenics; the desire to create human beings who have select features to create a particular IDEAL image. As our IDEALS of beauty, perfection, normality all come from mass media it follows that a European Ideals has become the norm. To understand how we come to frame beauty, studying history and the origins of media such as literature will lead you straight to the origins of conceiving of white as beautiful and dark as evil and ugly (for more info: Shakespeare, Race, and Colonialism by Ania Loomba). It is clear that language is racialized and we can’t say it’s just words, or just write off the erasure and very targeted assault on Black women inside and outside of the fashion industry.’

So does she mean Kanye is perpetuating the Nazi’s ideology? In reverse? A bit ridiculous even though I see her point about the exclusion of dark skinned women. And in case you were wondering about the last line, ‘We call them Mutts’, she refers to a 2006 interview in which Kanye said this: ‘If it wasn’t for race mixing there’d be no video girls. Me and most of our friends like mutts a lot.’

I don’t like name calling, terms like races, mutts should disappear, and Kanye should definitively drop the multiracial women only’, it sounds ridiculous…. so look out for the dark skinned women in Kanye’s next fashion show!